The present invention relates to the field of conveyors and especially conveyors for transferring stacks of sheets.
Conveyors play a critical role in the packaging and transport of sheet products, such as corrugated sheet material. Conveyors carry the newly manufactured sheet to various stations where stacks of sheets are formed and eventually loaded onto pallets for shipment. In order to optimize control over the sheets and stacks of sheets, many conveyors incorporate powered drive rollers to propel and direct the product.
In many cases, the nature of the product being conveyed may change, which ultimately may modify the transport requirements. For instance, in the corrugated sheet industry, the size of the corrugated panels may change from job to job. Regardless of the size of the corrugated panels, most jobs have similar packaging and transport requirements—i.e., the corrugated sheets are stacked to a predetermined height and loaded onto pallets. The step of loading the stacks onto pallets is relatively straightforward when the size of the sheets in the stack is roughly equal to the size of the pallet. When the corrugated sheets are smaller, however, multiple stacks are loaded onto a single pallet. This scenario complicates the manner in which the stacks are transferred and a given pallet load is built.
Further complicating the process is high production speeds. High throughput challenges the design of the conveyor system, particularly when the stacks must be manipulated or diverted along different paths in the process.
What is needed, therefore, is a conveyor apparatus that is adaptable to handle a wide range of products, while able to perform reliably under high throughput conditions.